Brighton all-girl band Electrelane proved they weren't exactly going to pander to the mainstream by making their debut album an entirely instrumental affair. Now, on this long-awaited follow-up, they finally deign to speak - and the results are as peculiar, grandiose and downright fascinating as their enigmatic image would suggest. Verity Susman warbles away in no fewer than four languages, occasionally throwing in quotations from Nietzsche or an entire Siegfried Sassoon poem to underline the sheer strangeness of the entire exercise. Meanwhile, her backing band brew up a powerful electro-guitar storm, complete with mournful string arrangements and eerie sound effects. Electrelane are not quite as clever as they think they are, and a good third of The Power Out is far too pretentious for its own good. When they do hit the mark, their leftfield experiments are highly entertaining - and at the very least, a welcome antidote to the sheer predictability of so much of today's indie music. Just don't expect to hear them on daytime radio any day soon.